


lazarus

by swordgay



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Implied Sexual Content, Kepler lives and doesn't know what to do about it, M/M, Post-Canon, Reunions, and I feel angst in this chilli's tonight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-02 06:46:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16300076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swordgay/pseuds/swordgay
Summary: Rule number thirteen of the SI-5 handbook: Even if you know the situation is compromised, remain collected. Do not risk further jeopardy.or, Kepler comes back from the dead and has to deal with everything that comes with it.





	lazarus

The creature — or creatures, he couldn’t tell — had Eiffel’s voice. He knew this, he’d known this for a long time now, but it was different when he couldn’t open his eyes to save his life.

It was like floating inside a comfortably warm void; if he’d been in a better shape, he might have described it as womb-like, but he didn’t.

For all intents and purposes, Warren Kepler was dead.

And yet.

 _And_ _yet_.

 

___________________________

 

He doesn’t know how he ended up here, but he has a faint idea. Something involving being swallowed up by the star, the Hephaestus, and a missing prosthetic where his right forearm used to be. Ah.

This is unpleasant, and for the first time in a long time, Kepler doesn’t devise a plan to tear whoever caused said unpleasantness apart slowly, because he knows he can’t. 

How do you even torture aliens, anyway? Not on an old ship with only enough fuel to make a trip back to Earth, that’s for sure. 

Earth. He feels a pain in his chest thinking about it, and it’s not the kind you get when you ache from homesickness; it’s the ugly, disgustingly soft dread you get when all you can think about is what you left behind, and whether or not you’re ready to return.

The truth is, Kepler has never felt attached to any place on the old blue planet—there were only moments, laughter shared in places people pass through, the thrill of outsmarting everyone in the room and making sure they’d never pass through anything again. 

And then... there are also people. Even in the empty station, where no one he’s ever known can see him, Kepler doesn’t allow himself to frown. He’s better than that. He’s always been better than that.

 

___________________________

 

 **Rule number thirteen of the SI-5 handbook:** _Even if you know the situation is compromised, remain collected. Do not risk further jeopardy._

It’s funny how high contrast can make some things beautiful and make some other things hideous.

Kepler loved contrast; the white and grey hairs peeking through his black curls. The difference in taste between whiskey and the food you’re having with it. 

He usually loved looking at blood falling on fresh snow. _Usually_.

Except for that morning, in a clearing in the middle of god knows where, where the blood wasn’t coming from someone he’d just shot.

The crimson liquid spilling on pure white belonged to Jacobi this time, and Kepler’s vision went black for a second. This had happened dozens of times (he’d lost count), but never mere _hours_ after them doing some semblance of cuddling in a hotel room. (He didn’t lose count of that.)

And yet, even as the blood was starting to cake through Daniel’s shirt, all he could register was the rule. Number thirteen. An unlucky number, but Kepler wasn’t superstitious. 

(Maybe he should have been.)

One, two, three, four, five, six shots rang in the cold morning light. More blood in the snow, and one body riddled with bullets.

Kepler’s face never broke. Not even as he sat there cleaning the wound in the hotel bathroom later, or when he noticed Jacobi tossing and turning at night, obviously aching. 

The bullet had gone straight through and exited his body before he’d fallen to the ground; Kepler’s own ache in his chest, though, that was another story. 

___________________________

 

Kepler learns, upon his return to Earth, that he’s entitled to nearly a year’s back pay for the time he was floating in space. It’s a lot, given how high his salary was before — nearly one hundred and fifty grand.

He doesn’t know what he’ll do with it yet.

 

___________________________

 

He tells himself it’s penance. 

That not calling the number they’d given him written on a neat card by someone with good handwriting is his punishment for being a monster. That he’ll never visit the address written on the back.

But even monsters, no matter how cold and unfeeling, sometimes love one person. Maybe that’s the scariest thing about them. 

___________________________

 

Being alone is odd, even when you know you’re deadly enough to take on any threat. Despite that, Kepler still can’t shake the uneasiness in his new apartment — it sticks to him like humid warmth on a summer day.

Things seem futile when no one depends on you, he quickly realises. No one to keep alive but himself, no one to give orders to—

He barely allows himself to think like that anymore, but Kepler knows the controlling, authoritarian part of his brain is still there somewhere, dormant, and he has no intention of waking it.

Regardless, civilian life takes him a while to get used to. He doesn’t need to get a job for a while thanks to his back pay, so his interactions with people are limited, but he still flinches when his overly nice neighbour greets him and calls him Warren instead of Sir. There’s also something unsettling about how mundane and normal everything is, now, miles away from mad scientists and airlocks and mind control.

___________________________

 

He doesn’t really pay attention to his hair for the first time in a decade, and it catches him off-guard how much more...human he looks with messy loose curls he doesn’t have to slick back.

But then his eyes land on the scar that goes through his left eyebrow, and he’s reminded of what he truly is again. 

Kepler smashes a mirror that morning, and if he didn’t already think his seven years of bad luck are behind him, he’d be phased. 

The blood on his knuckles from the shards of glass is such a familiar sight it makes him want to throw up.

At least the blood is his own this time.

___________________________

 

What do you talk about in therapy when most of your actions would make any normal person pale in the face? Kepler still hasn’t figured that one out, but he’s grateful for his therapist’s kind eyes regardless, even if they sit in silence a lot of the time.

One day, a little over four months since he came back, she asks him, “is there really no one you can contact from that mission?” And he lies and says no, they’re all dead or worse.

After that session, he takes up smoking again. Not the fancy cigars, mind you— the corner shop cigarettes you smoke on your balcony at ten in the evening, more like.

___________________________

 

“Fuck,” Kepler mumbles under his breath as he opens his mail one Tuesday afternoon. The envelope came with a logo he knows all too well, and he knew even before opening it in the hallway that this would be bad news.

“Everything okay, Warren?” his neighbour asks, arms full of grocery bags. It’s been six months now, but he still twitches at how familiar people are with him. 

“Just bad news is all.” His tone is honest with a sad half-smile, and it feels good not to lie to people anymore. After a while, it can wear you thin.

___________________________

 

He considers hundreds of possibilities before he accepts that he’ll have to go. 

The hearing is in three weeks in some nondescript government building, to go over testimonies and assess how the crew that made it back on Earth is doing now. And really, it’s not like Kepler didn’t know this would happen; they’d told him at Canaveral after they were done running medical tests on him, that they’d check in from time to time to make sure he was okay.

Somehow, the fact his fellow crew members would also be there had gone over his head.

Kepler thinks there’s no way he’s getting out of that room without a black eye.

___________________________

 

He waits for the punch, but it never comes, and he finally understands how his subordinates felt all these years. It’s nerve wracking, and he thinks instead of punching him in the face Jacobi’s going to blow him up, or worse.

As it turns out, Jacobi doesn’t do any of those things. No, he just pulls Kepler into afull body hug like he’s never hugged anyone before, and Kepler kind of forgets how breathing works.

“You motherfucker,” Jacobi says into his chest. “I hate you.”

Despite that last sentence, there’s a smile on his face, and Kepler doesn’t understand, but then again, their dynamic’s always been strange.

___________________________

 

“So,” says Jacobi much later, at a table in some nondescript bar, “how’s life, Sir?” 

A chuckle escapes Kepler’s lips, both at the formal address and the fact this isn’t too different from where they first met.

“No need to ‘Sir’ me anymore. I’d rather you didn’t, actually.” He takes his drink up to his lips.

“Old habits die hard, I guess.”

For a moment, it hits him how Jacobi hasn’t changed at all since he last saw him a million miles away. He still has the same messy haircut with shaved parts on the sides and the same curious eyes, and it fucks him up a little bit.  

He wonders if that means Jacobi would still follow him to the ends of the Earth.

The drink ends with him giving out his phone number and Jacobi promising he’ll call, and Kepler secretly hope he doesn’t; he doesn’t deserve to be in his life yet. 

___________________________

 

Jacobi does call. Several times. 

Kepler ignores them all and tells his therapist he’s not ready. When she tells him he might never be ready, he wants the floor to swallow him whole.

___________________________

 

**Monday at one-thirty two p.m _._**

_Hey, it’s Jacobi. I know you’re probably busy right now, but please call me back when you get this, okay? Bye._

 

**Thursday at nine sixteen a.m.**

_Look, I’m sorry if I overstepped by calling so soon. I’d just really— it’d mean a lot if we could talk this out. I gotta go, but please call me back? Any time is fine._

 

**Wednesday at five forty p.m.**

_Okay, I think I get the hint. If you don’t want me in your life, that’s your decision, but it’s a real shame is all I’m saying. Take care, Si— Kepler._

 

 **Saturday at two fifty-five a.m** _._

_You know what, Warren? Yeah, I called you Warren, deal with it, it’s how you know I mean what I’m gonna say. I know I said I got the hint, but fuck that. And fuck you too, by the way. Do you think you’re too important to call me back? Or is this some kind of fucking guilt thing? Is that what it is? Guilt hasn’t ever stopped you before, you fucking moron. At this point I just—_

 

**Saturday at three a.m.**

_Stupid fucking phone. I wasn’t finished. Anyway, I’m drunk enough that I have the guts to say this right now so I’m just gonna say it: I miss you. I didn’t wanna admit it because it’s so cliché of me but I really do. It’s been hard, you know. Coming home and learning how to be a person again. The others, they’re— they’re doing alright, I think, but they didn’t do the things we did. I guess my point is you’re the only person I wanted to talk to about this for the past six months but you were dead and then I find out you aren’t and you won’t talk to me. So fuck you and your survivor’s guilt or whatever. Come back for real, Warren._

 

___________________________

 

Kepler listens back to drunk and angry Jacobi’s voicemails for what feels like forever. He never used to be an angry drunk before— he was loud-mouthed and feisty, sure, but never this angry. On the contrary, drinking used to blur his edges and make him softer and sentimental.

He wonders what changed, and there’s a weird pang in his chest when he thinks about Jacobi struggling with coming back home. It’s not like Jacobi ever deserved any of this in the first place; he was just a man who’d made one big mistake, and Kepler made him into someone whose lips always tasted like gunpowder.

 _Fuck_ , he thinks as the voicemail gets to the part where he called him Warren again. He’s only done that five times, and three of those were just now.

_Fuck fuck fuck._

___________________________

 

“What you’re experiencing is completely normal,” his therapist tells him as she pours herself a glass of water. “people who were in the military as long as you were take a while to adjust to the absence of a military chain of command, and all the titles that come with it.”

He wants to tell her that she’s wrong, that sure, he might still flinch a bit when people call him by his first name, but it’s more than that. It’s the fact Jacobi seldom let that sound past his lips before, and now he’d done it three times. It’s the fact those times are a lot different from the first time he called him Warren, and he can’t take it.

 

___________________________

 

 **Rule number fourteen of the SI-5 handbook:** _As commanding officer, it is your duty to ensure the safety of your subordinates and to care for them should they be wounded._

“Warren,” Jacobi panted as more and more blood stained both the snow below him and Kepler’s hands.

Kepler looked away from the wound and into his dark eyes to find them full of fear, and not the fun kind.

“You’re going to be okay,” he told Jacobi then, half of that his certainty that he could fix this and half something he didn’t recognise. Sure, it was his duty to protect him, but this was different. He had no time to think about it, though.

He patched up the wound as best as he could to hold them over until they got to their motel with all the tech and supplies, and his hands touched the same places he’d touched earlier in the morning between the sheets.

Contrast between pleasure and pain. Either ironic or fucked up, depending on who you ask.

___________________________

 

The punch Kepler had been expecting weeks ago finally comes on a Friday morning after he opens his door to see an angry Jacobi standing there.

“I guess I deserved that,” is what he says first, and then, “please tell me who gave you my address so I can murder them.”

“Yeah, good luck getting rid of the whole admin department at what’s left of Goddard.” Jacobi pushes past him to walk into his apartment. 

“Doesn’t matter. I specifically told them not to give this address to anyone.” He rubs at his cheek while Jacobi paces around.

“The secretary was kind enough to make an exception for your concerned boyfriend,” Jacobi smiles.

“Daniel,” he lets out, and he intends it as a warning but it comes out more desperate than stern. 

“You wouldn’t answer. Do you know how shitty that was? I learn you’re alive and you just ghost me. I thought ‘wow, finally! We’ll get to finish all the conversations we never got to before he was blown out of an airlock’, but noooope. Things _always_ have to be on your terms.”

Kepler looks at him, and he expects even more anger than before, but instead, he finds that specific look Jacobi gets when he’s hurt. he tries to open his mouth to answer, but words fail him; there’s so much to be said that he doesn’t know where to start. It’s not just that, though. It’s the fact that he never planned on being in this position, not now, not so soon after coming back from the dead. Not now, when he’s not done coming alive again, when he’s still in the process of becoming a human being for the first time in a decade.

“Do you really not have anything to say?” Jacobi’s laughing a bitter laugh now, halfway through leaving. “The aliens really did a number on you.”

 _So Goddard briefed you on that, then,_ he wants to say. He wants to put on the blank slate expression he used to wear like a glove, but he can’t quite reach for it, and before he can form any more words, Jacobi leaves.

Kepler definitely doesn’t stand on his balcony to watch him walk away.

 

___________________________

 

It’s another month before he finally caves. 

It’s Friday —not that days of the week mean anything to him anymore— and he’s had too much whiskey to think straight. The alcohol’s hitting him just right and making him ache for something, _someone,_ somewhere. He can’t exactly place it, but the feeling’s there, warm and nauseating and sickly-sweet.

If he were sober, he’d know not to do this; he’d know how to pull himself out of this specific brand of melancholy and go to bed. 

But he’s not, so he searches his drawers frantically for the card he was given months ago.

If he were sober, he’d hesitate before knocking, but he’s not, so he knocks six times.

 

___________________________

 

Jacobi’s mouth on his makes him feel like he’s on fire. He can’t remember the last time he felt like this —so alive and raw and exposed— but he suspects it was in similar circumstances. It’s like he’s getting drunker by the minute like he’s high on the fact that Jacobi seemed to just _know_ what he needed when he’d opened the door and saw him there looking empty. It’s the feeling of being wanted, of feeling him kiss back when he’d stepped over and closed the distance between them. It’s Jacobi’s hands in his hair, pulling him closer and holding him in place.

When they pull away they both look absolutely wrecked, and at that moment Kepler knows or at least thinks he knows, that Jacobi hasn’t kissed anyone like that since they were in space either. 

There’s absolutely no ceremony to the way they reunite. It’s feverish and almost violent when Kepler slams into him over and over, Jacobi’s hands trailing down his back and leaving red lines in their wake.

 

___________________________

 

After they’re done and spent, Jacobi takes Kepler’s jaw in his hand and touches their foreheads together.

“Stay, please,” he breathes in the small space between their lips, still panting.

“Alright,” Kepler responds before he can think about it too hard.

 

___________________________

 

 **Rule number three of the SI-5 handbook:** _Never make any promises you can’t keep._

“Where would you like to go, when this is all over?” Jacobi asked one day, in the early days of them boarding the Hephaestus. It was one of the rare moment they managed to have for themselves, in his quarters in the dead of night.

“Mister Jacobi, this is far from being over.”

“I know, but humour me a moment, Sir.”

Kepler pondered the question for a while, studying the way the star’s light shone on Jacobi’s bare skin between his sheets. “I think,” he started as he ran his index down Jacobi’s side, “I’d like to take you to Europe. Have you ever been to Paris?”

Jacobi shook his head no. Kepler reached up to play with his hair.

“You’d love it. The fireworks on their national holiday are exceptional.”

Jacobi couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t distastefully sappy, so instead, he said, “I bet they are, Sir.”

 

___________________________

 

When normal people love each other, it normally goes like this. Dates, sex, more dates and more sex, a place together.

When people who aren’t quite sure they’re human anymore love each other, it goes like this. Murder, sex, more murder and more sex, a spaceship. 

It also goes like this. Jacobi wakes up first, makes sure Kepler’s still there, and he’s not. It’s not like he should have expected any less.

**Author's Note:**

> this took me like...weeks to write because I wanted to get the Vibe right but I think it turned out okay??? anyways, I'm thinking this will have a part two because I want to explore more of this 'verse, so if you want to see more, please let me know!


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